Florence-Part 1

Finding Florence: Well, finding Florence (which is actually called Firenze here in Italy) was quite an adventure...or more like finding a place to park. I personally think that Florence was a maze before it was a city, and the architects just built around the paths. It's crazy!!! When we did finally park, we didn't really know how to get where we were going so we asked this couple nearby. Really nice couple with a really, really nice car. The guy got in and pushed a button and the trunk popped open, the top folded up inside, and the trunk shut it in and VWALA!! A beautiful Mercedes Convertible. Anyhoo, we got directions, stopped for breakfast, then headed out to the Accadamia, which used to be a school for artists during the Renaissance and now holds the oh-so-famous Sculpture of David by Michelangelo. While we were waiting to be let in, I did some street-vendor shopping. Thought I'd bring home some Italian style with me.

The Accadamia: This place is really cool. One room (or a couple rooms, I don't remember) was full of sculptures that Michelangelo had started but hadn't finished so you could see the big blocks of marble that he used to sculpt. It's incredible that someone could look at a big hunk of stone and say, "There's a person inside of that. I'm going to chisel away at this thing until I can find them." And so he does it and comes out with a person that is so precise you can see the muscles in their arms, the hair on their head, and the veins in their neck. The statue of David is amazing. It's huge for one thing, 16 feet tall, but it's sooooo precise. Just like I was talking about, you can see everything! No wonder it's so famous.
A lot of the statues were projects the students had when it was still a school way back when. I can't imagine how stressed I would be if one of my teachers told me that I had to sculpt a woman in a silk gown with a wolf at her feet all out of marble for homework!!!! Anyhoo, it was really impressive.

River and Bridges: For the sake of putting some sort of picture in this post, let me tell you about the river of Florence. It's a really pretty river. In 1333, I think, the river flooded and wiped out a lot of Florence and destroyed the 6 or 7 bridges. They were rebuilt in 1334, and then there was another flood sometime later that wiped out some of the bridges again. During WWII, all but one bridge was destroyed. It's now known as Ponte Vecchio, meaning "The Old Bridge" and the other bridges have once again been restored.





















Duomo: After the Accadamia we ate lunch at McDonalds, (yes, we ate McDonalds in Florence, Italy.) and then we went to see the Duomo, which is different than the Duomo in Siena. This building was designed by Brunelleschi and it is the biggest dome in Italy. He also invented the crane, because without that, the dome would have been very difficult to build. And without him, Brunelleschi, many of the domes in Italy would never have been built. Let me tell you this, architects have lowered their standards way down over the past thousand years. Compared to these buildings here, most new buildings look like they were designed by preschoolers! The Duomo is a stunning building. Underneath it is a museum of Roman foundation. The floors and walls down there were real Roman foundation, and they had a lot of cool artifacts on display. There were ancient...coffin lids?...that had been found in there as well. And there was one room that was blocked off that Grandpa swears is where Jack Sparrow buried his victims. I could see the skulls in there, so I believe it. Seriously.
Outside the Duomo there was a gypsy begging for money. We actually saw quite a few gypsies in Florence. More than I've seen anywhere else. You can tell they're gypsies because they usually wear their hair down or in a low pony tail, and then they have really bright-colored skirts and shirts.